No one ever said it was going to be easy...

Mom Rants

February 04, 2013

I'd like to think that after parenting for almost nine years now, I've grown a pretty thick skin, but then it happens and I just want to go over to the stupid TSA lady and her mean glare to tell her why my 2-year old is still drinking out of a bottle.

As if she really gives a shit. Or if I really give a shit.

At least it wasn't a bottle of Jack.

I'm the first to admit that I've dished out my own fair share of judgments, in weird glances and snooty blog posts, because I'm human and I hate spanking and kid leashes and babies drinking Coke out of their bottles and WHY JUST WHY?

But I also know that parents have reasons for doing most of what they do, at least I try to tell myself that anyway, and that the kid with the leash might have a disability and the baby drinking Coke might... yeah, sorry, I can't think of a good reason for that one.

Doesn't get enough sugar and sleeps too much?

Hey, I tried.

So I hope that other parents will offer the same courtesy to me when my 2-year old walks through the airport with a bottle of almond milk becauase that is how she takes a nap and goes to sleep at night and I like sleep and I had three non-sleepers who wouldn't take a bottle and ... you get the picture.

If it makes a difference to you, she only drinks milk from it. Not Coke.

See the whole thing about parenting is that it's a collection of moments made up of things we thought we'd never do. Ever.

We pick up their chewed food and we wash poop off their butt with our bare-ass hands and it's all crazy.

So are we really in the position to look at a mom of a toddler with a bottle and be all "WTF HOW COULD YOU LET HER DRINK FROM THE BOTTLE AFTER THE AGE OF 1!" or whatever the age is.

I haven't checked my baby manual lately.

I'd say that if we took the time to stop and ask the parent giving their kid the gigantic bag of jelly beans at 8am and got the full story, the one where the kid wouldn't put his pants or shoes on and the mom (or dad) had to get out of the house for an appointment and she was like "OH JUST TAKE THE JELLY BEANS FOR GOD SAKES!"

Then we'd totally get it and laugh and maybe even be BFFs.

That is until she pulled out the bottle full of coke.

My point: Just because you *think* you'd never do it doesn't mean you'll never do it. If there's anything I've learned about being a parent, never ever say never.

January 29, 2013

I still remember when I attended a girls in science day at the local community college as a teen and they handed me a button that said $.68.

I'd like to think that the pure absurdity of such a fact was the reason why it never fully hit me until much later in my life, when I pulled the shield of internalized misogyny off and allowed myself to be penetrated with what it's like to be a woman today, in what is heralded as a forward-thinking society.

We carry and bear the children who become the game changers, the law makers, the great thinkers who should be defending us, who should be rising up and shaking their fists right along with us and yet we are still treated like second class citizens.

Every single person with a mother should be angry.

I tell my kids about our history and to them it sounds like a fairy tale. "Can you believe that in our lifetime, women weren't able to vote?"

"Isn't it silly that women doing the same job as men don't make as much money?"

It sounds as ridiculous to them as a flying unicorn.

And that's exactly how I want it to stay in their minds. For my girls and my boy.

Ridiculous.

If birthing four children did anything to me, it tore off my rose-colored glasses. It made me a truthteller. A caller of bullshit.

I tell my children the truth about why I didn't change my name to match their father's.

"Because women were property. We were like things that people could own."

Fuck tradition. Fuck the status quo. Where exactly has that gotten us?

Even though I want to yell, I want to scream and beat certain people with their own Bibles, I do my best to point out the inequalities and injustices with hope for the future.

Because without hope it's just anger.

If we all would just question it, if we would bravely ask our kids, our girls AND our boys, "Isn't it silly?," "Isn't it awful?," or "Isn't it wrong?," I believe there is power in those "yeses."

Your sons should be just as angry as your daughters.

If there is anything I can do my children, if there's anything you can do for yours, it's arming them with the power to ask questions, to ask "why?"

January 23, 2013

I was all excited when the kids chose Eric Carle's "Draw me a Star" for their bedtime story until I got to the part where the man and woman were drawn, naked of course, at which point all hell broke loose.

"I can see her vagina!" Margot giggled.

"That it so yucky!" my son said, pointing the the shape of the man's penis which really looked like a small, sharp triangle dangling between his legs.

Dangerous, perhaps. But not yucky.

So, I took a deep breath, gave the warning look to my husband which generally says "pop the ear plugs in because I might say the word 'testicles' around the children" and began my longwinded discussion about body parts and how they're not yucky, just private and personal, which is why we might feel uncomfortable or embarrassed seeing them in a book.

"YUCKY!" my son screamed.

All the kids giggled, except Quinlan, who reminded everyone from high atop her bunkbed that artists paint people naked all the time and it's not disgusting or weird.

At least ONE child listens to me while I'm standing up on my soapbox.

For as much as sexuality and nakedness freaked out my parents and therefore freaked me out, I'm trying to do the complete opposite with my own kids, not so that they'll become flashers or sex maniacs which does not happen when you talk openly and honestly with kids about sex HEAR THAT RIGHT WING CONSERVATIVES, but that they'll feel comfortable in their own skin.

From what I can tell, sex and nudity are not the root of all evil, or really any evil for that matter, and the more informed my kids can be the better prepared they will be to survive and function in a society that has some pretty fucked up views about sex.

If only they held the same views about violence.

The way I see it, I can leave their sex education up to society and its fucked up views or I can do it myself. Or at least, pawn the hard stuff off to my husband, who unsuccessfully tried to escape with some excuse about making school lunches.

"What's that dwarf's name, mom?" Drew asked, after we had moved onto Snow White.

"Bashful" I said. "Which means embarrassed, like how you felt when you saw the naked people in the other book."

He smiled, then asked "Why did the mother send that man to kill her daughter?"

January 14, 2013

I still remember the day I got my very first report card in the first grade and my teacher called them out last name first.

"CHASE, KRISTEN" she yelled.

"CHASE KRISTEN!!!" some idiot in the back of the room screamed, and thus began a new game at recess.

I was devastated with my horrible last name for about a week until the kids figured out another game to play and the silly game played at my expense was yesterday's new.

Turns out Quinlan is getting her own fair share of giggles at the expense of her unique name, as she shared with me the other day as I was opening a box of spoils to add to her pretzel tin collection.

"LOOK AT THESE AMAZING MUGS!" I screeched, hold the pretzel handle and showcasing the beer can shaped ceramic mugs with her name printed in shiny gold letters, ala 1975.

Quinlan barely smiled, which was completely uncharacteristic of her.

"I told the kids in my class that I was named after a pretzel company and some of the boys laughed at me" she sighed, which actually made me laugh out loud.

Not the empathic response I was going for. But seriously, the stuff kids find funny. I mean, pretzels? At least save the giggles for kids named after vaginal creams or something, guys.

Pretzels are awesome. And tasty!

So I told her my own sordid tale, which seemed to lighten the mood, and then reminded her that people laugh when they're uncomfortable or can't seem to find the words or actual emotion they want to express.

"One day, when you're selling those tins for thousands of dollars, you can laugh at how ridiculous they were," I said, rolling the ceramic mugs back up in bubble wrap.

Then I asked her who it was, exactly, and after she told me, I did what every parent would probably do in the same situation:

I showed her a photo I have of him wearing a very lovely pair of Tory Burch flats.

January 07, 2013

When you walk around with your ankles shackled by anxiety on a regular basis, your mind can get trapped on a merry-go-round of crazy thoughts. But every now and then I can them, like the persistent one in which I convince myself that I'm going to die young, and turn it into a brilliant idea.

Now the skin mole check, or whatever that unsexy exam where they mark all your freckles and moles on a paper and then scrape a few off with a razor is called, wasn't necessarily brilliant, but it was a smart idea. And phew, all clear.

And there is the circus money I've started to stash away, which is really smart, or possibly brilliant if they all decide to major in art history or something.

Yes, so I was inspired by a Matt Damon movie. Shut up.

No, the actual brilliant idea came about when I saw these pretty "Q" hoop earrings on Etsy when Quinlan was a baby. And I thought since she had such a unique letter, that it might be cool to collect jewelry with it and give them all to her when she was older and wanted to change her name because it was so weird.

KIDS.

This then turned into a collection of initial necklaces and other fun trinkets for all the girls which I stuff on a regular basis into our fireproof box.

But then THEN the real brilliance happened thanks to the lovely Courtney who posted a link and photo to a tin can on my Facebook Wall, which generally speaking I HATE when people post things on my wall but it was a can with Quinlan on it.

No, not her face but her name, because apparently a long time ago there was a Quinlan pretzel company in Pennsylvania and so of course I had to buy the really expensive tin can, which led to a search for other such tin cans, which led to an obsession with finding ALL THE QUINLAN TIN CANS THAT EVER EXISTED, as well as old bar trays, and most recently, weird mugs with pretzel handles.

This is all I could fit in the photo.

At the time, Drew was really into fire trucks, which he promptly grew out of the second I put a unbelievably challenging fire engine decal on his wall and purchased a whole gaggle of old fire truck toys, particularly old Fisher Price ones, all of which sit gathering dust on his shelf.

Remember those?

And while Margot was a bit of challenge, I did a little research and found out that her name means "pearl" so, duh, vintage pearl purses!, stashed haphazardly in a box that sits on a shelf in her closet.

Of course, there's the stories I write here, that they can chuckle at and laugh over, which I might force them to do every year on my birthday, even after I'm gone, while pounding on tin cans, playing with fire trucks, and wearing pearl purses and octopus jewelry.

Or they can sell everything I bought and go on a fabulous trip somewhere.

And then at least I can say that all this stupid anxiety was worth it.

If you're curious: I don't spend tons of hours or money doing this, really. I just search every now and then on Etsy, set a budget that I refuse to go over, then tuck everything away in a safe spot so they can't get into them and toss the $25 vintage fire truck off the 2nd floor deck.